The obligatory list of links :-)

The distillation of too many hours of mis-spent surfing !

Feedback.... (please!)

News

ABC   BBC   Stuff   CNN   Alertnet   EmergencyNet

Newspapers
News4All   Total News

Geek
Slashdot   The Register  Nature Science Update 

Reference
CIA factbook  Maps  Dictionary  Wikipedia  Timeanddate  Legal   Virtual library   Internet public library

Essential literature
Bible   Shakespeare

Business
Stocks   US_patent  EU_patent  Currency  Bloomberg   Hoovers

Search
Google   Vivisimo  Newsgroups  Blogs

Utilities
Translator   Image manipulation  Email  Unit conversions  Reference desk

Humour
Disinformation,  Uncyclopedia,  Ig-nobel awards,  The Onion,  "The Brights"

Applications that run from either CD's or USB sticks


A small hobby-horse of mine - to build up a suite of freeware that will run from a CD - totally virus-proof, simple, effective, personalised and transportable!!! Additional brownie-points go to the applications that do not write anything to Windoze registry, HDD, etc!!
Many others have done much more than I towards this goal - for an excellent example, see John Haller's site, the TechTastic site, the Darkvelvet site,

Here goes!!

CD burner - if you run your life from a USB stick, you better have a good backup system!  
Portable Firefox, or OB1, or even Nettamer!
Portable Thunderbird, or JBmail (recommended)
Portable GAIM, or Miranda IM (recommended)
NVu or FPX (with Windoze), or SeaMonkey  or Trellian (recommended)
Open Office  (Use V2, with OpenDocument support) 
CadSoft7.1, Inkscape, Autosketch 5 on Disk#2, Nov 1999 issue of "PCFormat" issue 101
Spread32,   Treepad,   Filesync, MD5 checker Freebyte Zip,  Python,  Irfanview,  Atlantis
SQLite database engine, and the SQLite database browser

Some other minimalist and portable app websites


Tinyapps   Portable apps 

Security

Metropipe PVPM,   Anonym.OS,   JSC

Live distro's

Puppy linux - Way to go!!,   Zeta and office